Major Japanese talent confirmed for GDC '08

Developers behind some of Japan's biggest franchises will be delivering sessions at next month's Game Developers Conference, boosting the line-up for the February event.

Two of the team behind Square Enix's epic Final Fantasy franchise will be at the event, with general manager for technical research Taku Murata discussing the company's work on a new game engine for FF XIII, while art director Isamu Kamikokuryo will discuss the art style of the series in an interview with Bungie's Steve Theodore.

Ray Nakazato will be delivering a session on Lost Odyssey, the Xbox 360 exclusive RPG co-created by Mistwalker and Microsoft Game Studios' FeelPlus team, to address what did and didn't work on the original project.

The latest addition to the audio track is a session from Masafumi Takada, who will be delivering a retrospective of his work from Killer 7, God Hand, Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles and No More Heroes.

Also joining the line-up is Yoshiki Okamoto, CEO of Game Republic and creator of Time Pilot and Street Fighter II, to discuss the methods behind the game creation process.

This year, GDC will also be hosting dual Japanese and English wireless translation services in a effort to open the event to a wider Japanese audience.